


the whole heart shrinks

by unthank



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Lesbian Character, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28431330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unthank/pseuds/unthank
Summary: savage girls raise wild boys
Comments: 15
Kudos: 51





	the whole heart shrinks

**Author's Note:**

> [half the world in sweetness, the other in fear](https://open.spotify.com/track/7sXexSpg9HMLS6e15mo8Ei?si=mFL63HhjQWqUBjnkpy0TZA)
> 
> cw: implied/referenced lesbophobia

HERE LIES SHE

— half elegant,

half wild,

all forgotten memories. 

A girl is something untamed. Her hands, as claws, can cut through the lies told to her by her father. Her teeth, sharp and bright, just as much a weapon as her tongue, clever and quick as a whip. A girl is something to be feared; she’s something to be proud of.

She’s a wicked thing, this girl, she knows she is and so does her mother. Her father does, too, and he makes sure to tell her that. Often, frequently. She’s always sick of hearing him speak. Her mother warns her to hold her tongue, to speak when spoken to and keep her knees together, to not eat more than she is given.

But she’s a hungry girl, this one, and she’ll eat everything she can. She’d eat her father too, if her mother wouldn’t cry.

Sometimes she wants to eat the boys at school. The same boys who laugh and jeer, point out her body, bigger than most girls her age, more developed than they think she should be. She doesn’t cower and cry, doesn’t let them rule her the way her father rules her mother. She’s bigger than the girls, but she’s bigger than the boys too — she’s a monster and a wolf, a savage _youkai_ in the skin of a fifteen year old girl. She’s not afraid to slick their mouths shut with a bone-crunching uppercut.

Her mother tells her off, later, at home. They’re by the kitchen stove and her mother is cleaning a cut on her forehead, applying butterfly stitches, neat and even across red wounds. It’s a good thing she has a fringe, her mother tells her, she wouldn’t want her father to see it.

“You shouldn’t be getting into fights,” her mother whispers, all worry and fear and care. “How will you ever find a husband?”

“I don’t want one,” she replies.

 _A girl would be nice_ , she thinks. But it’s forbidden.

She doesn’t always know what makes her burn, she certainly doesn’t know what hisses and scratches beneath her skin, but she’s never got along with anyone. 

During school she played volleyball. Her hands were rough and the burn in her legs changed from fear to exhilaration, and though she ached and sweated she still tossed those balls as high as she could, as directly as she could. Her spikers hit them, successfully, and she felt as if she could make them fly.

It was at nationals she met another girl; taller than her, more slender than her, deep maple hair curled and coiffed into something both perfect and practical. She was a year above her, close to eighteen where she’d already turned seventeen. All she wanted to do was know her. To know the warm creamy planes of her neck, her toned stomach, the soft curve of her strong, steady thighs. She’d never wanted to know a girl so intimately as she did then.

The girl kissed her, outside, away from prying eyes in the darkness of a covered back alley. She tasted of honey and that single kiss was never enough. She wanted to know what it was to a girl and love her — she wondered if she ever would.

If she’d had her way, she’d have set the world on fire and made every girl remember her name.

She wanted her name out her father’s mouth. Out of his mind and off his tongue. She never wanted to hear a man speak her mother’s gift to her again, but here she was, against her will, listening to them besmirch it.

She’d never wanted to be married either.

But at twenty-six and three quarters, her father had decided she was quite old enough, maybe even too old. She was certainly too old to be scuffing her knees and yelling her throat hoarse at the victories she landed on the court. After all, her father would remind her, what man would want an athlete built of muscle and rough words; it was time she became the woman she was born to be.

And she should want a man; bigger than her, stronger than her, well enough to provide for the family she was expected to give him. For that was her role, her father reminded her of this as well, she was put in this world to give children to her husband and parents, to care for the home and be as quiet as a dormant mouse.

She was near enough twenty-eight when she gave birth, alone, surrounded by cold-coloured nurses, to two blood covered, squalling boys — lungs already as loud as she remembered hers being. Their father was nowhere in sight. He was never seen again. 

It dug into her, the knowledge that she’d do this all alone, it buried and burned its way into her never cracked ribs. Her sons were stronger than most already, small and helpless but louder than any other child in the ward; they didn’t calm until they were in her arms and she felt as if she could crumble. It wasn’t as though she never wanted to be a mother, she’d thought about it sometimes, teaching a child or two to fight and live as she had always wanted. But she didn’t want it like this, never like this. She didn’t want it with a man too weak to face the duty he demanded of her. She didn’t want it with a man at all.

Her boys would be better men than the man who dared call himself their father — that she would make sure of.

Atsumu and Osamu grew ever louder. They were bigger than other boys their age, broader and blunt and more comfortable in the company of each other than the peers they were supposed to be friends with. Atsumu, in particular, had a habit of speaking too soon. He said what was on his mind, picked fights with others who didn’t meet the standards he believed to be the ordinary, relying only on his brother to hold him down to the earth. She knew he got far too much from her.

Her boys weren’t savage the way she was. They didn’t want to tear the world apart to be free of the shackles that came with being made a girl, they were free of that the moment they embraced their rough-housed boyhood. But in their bright, burnt ochre eyes festered a wildness she knew she’d gifted them.

Atsumu was far the worst for it. His mouth was filled with sharp little teeth and a hunger that overtook hers. (Children often surpass their parents in some way, they take your traits and make them theirs, make them so much more than you thought they ever would be.)

And it was at the school gates she heard that another boy was harassing hers, going after her baby for something he could never control. It wasn’t his fault his father was a wasted gasp of stale air. But he was crying, fat tears down his swollen, round cheeks — her instincts said, here, to fight whoever dared hurt her boy, to show them the truly savage nature of a lone wolf-mother.

Instead, though, she said softly, “What d’you do to brats, baby? What did mama tell you?”

“Hit ‘em harder,” Atsumu choked out, seeking comfort. “Or leave ‘em.”

She heard the tuts then, the shakes of other mothers’ heads, whispering between each other that they would never teach their child such a thing, they’d never raise their sons to be violent, bloody boys. Of course, it must be what having no husband does to a girl, they’d raise their daughters to be wary of growing into a woman like her. 

_So you think_ , is what she knows. _Your girls are far more fearsome than you believe_. She wanted every girl to know that too.

What mattered now, as it had for several years, was the survival of her boys in a world that sought to crush every fevered spirit. She’d do everything she could to make sure they were honest to themselves through all adversaries.

Osamu’s truth was open to her in his final year of high school. 

She’d found him, in his room, to remind him to do his homework and make sure his culinary class applications had been sent. But she found him entangled, hands lost in soft brown hair that belonged to a boy she recognised as his teammate. She coughed, of course, to let them know she was here and not go any further; not while his mother was in any way capable of hearing what her sons might get up to in their spare time away from home.

He’d tumbled to the floor, looking between her and the boy in the bottom bunk with a fear she’d never seen in his eyes before.

“We’re havin’ katsudon for tea tonight,” she said carefully, trying not to startle her already frightened baby. “If he wants to join us.”

She decided to leave, turning away from the fragile atmosphere and let Osamu come to her instead. If he loved a boy the same as him she knew, she understood. She’d let her quietest love the way she never could, why on earth would she do anything else?

Soon after, she heard him come running. His steps were always heavy on their wooden floors, weighed down where his twin brother jumped, steady in a way she was deeply proud of. 

Osamu wasn’t one to show his feelings openly. He didn’t cling and cry or spring adoration as openly as Atsumu. It was something she loved about them both, though she truly loved everything about the boys she grew and raised on her own, but they were two halves — reflections and balances of each other, perfectly in tandem. The other twin would always be there for the other. And now, she struggled not to cry as Osamu threw his arms around her and thanked her, over and over.

It was all she could do to hold her near grown child close, to stroke his hair and remind him that, of course, her wolf-mother love was unconditional.

She was nearing half a century when her boys left home — each following their own desires and burning passions, each hand in hand with a boy who turned their souls into fire and grounded them in their brand new homes. She wanted nothing more than for them to be happy. She wanted them to be content.

It was cold in her home, though, it was empty. Two decades of her years had been focused on a life she never knew would be hers and she craved knowing the touch of someone who could love her too.

She craved the touch of a woman made as she was; burnt, half savage, created out of years of stone hardship. Inside her chest, she was sure her heart had shrunk to the size of a passion fruit. Small, tough to crack. She hoped there was a centre as sweet as she remembers a girl’s kiss being.

It was her turn now, to brave the world that desired her end. The same world that tried to scrape and cut the softness from the centre of her girl-heart, the world that tried to end her savage love by forcing upon her the expectations provided to girls across the earth. But it didn’t take her, not at all. Her boys had teeth as sharp as hers and tongues as wicked as she had once been. She’d raised her boys with every fierceness she possessed.

And now she was here, alone again, a girl again in spirit. A world she could carve by herself now in the palm of her hand.

This was the world where she would know what it was to love a woman. She’d know what it was to kiss the curve of her neck and touch the soft silk of her waist; she’d know what it was to feel alive in the arms of a girl like her. She’d know what it was to love a woman and be loved by her in return.

A woman is still something untamed, she’s something wild and free. A woman can make a world of her own; for her heart, for her child — for every girl she’s ever dared dream to love.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the mama miya lesbian fic i've been talking about on twitter for the past month or so. i have to say, it's [ao3 inoko's fic about hoshiumi asa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25674994) that inspired me to write my own take on a mother who loves other women. i decided, however, to take it in a direction which shows how a girl, untamed by the expectations girls are often placed under, would raise boys like the miya twins — who themselves are untamed and follow the beat of their own drum
> 
> it's entirely self indulgent to write a fic like this, but the woman who raised the miya twins must have been someone incredible. and she must've, in my opinion, loved women unashamedly. 
> 
> 1\. the song for this fic is _night vision_ by suzanne vega. i feel like it represents how our protagonist must feel, trying to find her way in a world and situation she doesn't feel is made for her, but she's still full of adoring love for those important to her  
> 2\. i use the word 'tea' when referring to dinner. this is usually a colloquial word in certain english dialects, which i felt was appropriate to use when trying to portray that the miyas are from an area which has it's own unique dialect. i use the word myself, and it's nice to sometimes see english dialects from the uk  
> 3\. just a bit of extra info, but the boy osamu is dating is suna. i personally like to imagine that, in this universe, atsumu is dating kita. both of them are incredibly loved  
> 4\. the title for this fic comes from a song by la dispute, _all our bruised bodies and the whole heart shrinks_
> 
> thank you so much for reading!
> 
> [twitter @kuguken](https://twitter.com/kuguken)
> 
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/heresy)


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